Yemenis

German authorities, acting on a U.S. request, arrested two Yemeni men on suspicion that they belong to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a German security official said. Police arrested the men at a Frankfurt airport hotel, the official said. One of the men, identified as Mohammed Ali Hassan Sheik Mujahed, is suspected of being responsible for Al Qaeda's logistics in Yemen, the official said. The other was identified as Said Mohammed Mohsen.

Feuding Yemeni leaders signed a reconciliation agreement Sunday designed to end a six-month leadership crisis and bring about political and economic reforms. In a state ceremony here, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his vice president, Ali Salim Bidh, signed the 32-page document, which also bore the signatures of 39 other Yemeni politicians.

The men who bombed the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole got help from Yemeni officials who fought with them in Afghanistan in the 1980s, sources close to the case said Monday as the crippled ship began a five-week trip home. The Cole was getting a piggyback ride back to the United States aboard a Norwegian ship carrying the 8,600-ton destroyer on its deck. The ships sailed from waters off Yemen on Sunday. The Cole should reach its home port of Norfolk, Va., by about Dec.

Northern Yemeni troops blasted the besieged southern city of Aden with rockets Sunday killing 17 people, including nine who were digging wells in a desperate search for scarce water. Four rockets fell near a building belonging to the United Nations in the central Khormaksar area of Aden, killing nine people who were digging wells nearby, witnesses and hospital sources said. Eight civilians, including four children, were killed by another rocket that hit a building in the same area, they said.

Yemen's top tribal chief says tribalism and Islam should retain their importance in a multi-party political system and that tribesmen should have the traditional right to carry weapons. "In my opinion, pluralism is better than a one-party system, but it should be based on the Yemeni people's beliefs, which are mainly Islam," Sheik Abdullah ibn Hussein Ahmar, was quoted Monday as saying in the Emirates newspaper Al Ittihad.

A Yemeni grocer has been shot in what officials fear is a pattern of backlash against Middle Easterners following the Sept. 11 attacks. Fadhl Albusaisa was attacked Wednesday night in the doorway of his S-Mart convenience store in this small town about 45 miles south of Fresno, according to police. He was shot in the right shoulder and is expected to survive. The shooting came as Central Valley authorities have been investigating the Sept.

On the eve of the fourth anniversary of a now-shattered merger between North and South Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed Saturday to prevent the southern stronghold of Aden from seceding. "We are now tightening the ring around Aden," he declared, echoing claims that the north has repeatedly made since the war erupted more than two weeks ago. So far, they have proved to be exaggerated.

Yemeni warplanes and artillery pounded mountain hide-outs of an anti-U.S. leader and his followers Friday in a major offensive aimed at ending a six-week conflict that has killed at least 500 people. Yemen's army chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Ali Khatami, said government troops had taken control of locations in the Jabal Maraan mountains, outside the northern town of Sadah, where followers of Hussein Badr Eddin Houti were holed up.

An airliner belonging to Yemeni state carrier Yemenia that was carrying 153 people crashed into choppy seas as it came in to land on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros today, officials said. "Not yet," an airline official told Reuters when asked whether the carrier had information about survivors, adding that the 142 passengers included nationals of France and the Comoros.

Southern Yemeni forces launched air and missile attacks on the capital, Sana, and northern troops advanced on the southern port of Aden on Friday in the worst fighting since the two Yemens united four years ago. The latest battles blew apart what remained of the fragile thread that has held together the Arab world's poorest country since the former Marxist south and the conservative north came together.